


Somehow a Part

by softcorevulcan



Series: A part of the world [2]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Character Death, Character Death Fix, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illyria Character Study, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 14:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16451564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softcorevulcan/pseuds/softcorevulcan
Summary: Illyria finds the strength to go back in time just once more, and faces the consequences of that choice. Or - Illyria and Wesley cuddle after Wesley doesn’t die.





	Somehow a Part

**Author's Note:**

> Character deaths mentioned - The canonical ones of Fred and Wesley, and one in-fic major character death. Mortality is definitely a theme, in case you'd like to avoid that. About Fred, I'd like to think she's a part of Illyria, but as I haven't read the comics yet so that's just my interpretation, and you can read into it whichever way suits you. 
> 
> In keeping in line with my tendencies, Wesley's anxiety gets explored a bit, stress and choices in general get explored a bit, and cuddling is a major element. Also, I love Illyria's character and would love a 100k recommendation fic if anyone knows of one, or any recommendations with her in them.

She missed him.

Even after the slaughter, meant to quell her grief and give her purpose, even after every enemy had been slain that night. When there were no more bodies left, she still felt that gaping hollow within her chest. It would not be quelled.

Illyria suspected that nothing could console it.

The others had barely made it. But by some miracle, they had survived. Except for him.

While the others dragged themselves back to some place of refuge, the human among them carried by the vampires, Illyria stood frozen. They did not notice her fall behind. All of the enemies were gone, and she was in no danger, and so they were not acutely aware.

With so little energy left in her body, she somehow pulled the strength to make herself travel back. Somehow, she found enough power left to return to the time before, when he was alive.

The familiar warp of space, of location, a twitch in her the only tell that she had replaced herself at this previous point. None of them noticed the switch.

Illyria missed that rush of experience, traveling and stopping and starting, bending all that existed to her will. She no longer had the capacity to sustain herself through such an act.

Somehow, though, she had found the strength. Her body feeling as if it might rip apart now, she stood tall and pretended. She put on an act, the way she had seen Wesley do so when he shook the poison from his form and pressed clean clothes to his body and drew himself tall to walk into the building full of what he saw as wickedness. He put on a performance which would last until he’d made it to the room he called his office, and then upon closing the door, perhaps would let it falter.

Illyria would now put on this performance, and would pull strength from some well of reserves she no longer felt, but needed beyond anything, and would act as if she had not yet battled hoards.

Her body felt fragile, more so to her than even the new pangs of this weak human vessel. She felt like the shells of eggs looked when she saw Wesley’s fingers had fumbled and dropped some into his sink, trying to pull them out of their carton and so tired and furious with existence that his fingers had lost grip, and two egg yolks had dripped out of a smatter of fractures - two eggs he had not been able to salvage for their breakfast. He had managed to pick up the other four eggs that had slipped out, with only smaller scuffs, still for the most part whole. He had made an omelette for them with those remaining, breaking them open later on the side of a bowl on purpose, that time, broken clean in half like the cut of a guillotine.

She was not like one of those eggs which held itself mostly together until it’s proper purpose could be executed. She was leaking, myriad of tiny fractures, just small enough that light did not pour out and tear her further asunder.

No matter what, Illyria had to hold herself together right now.

The sight of Wesley, alive, present, listening with rapt attention as the group mapped out their plan, gave her a staggering jolt of motivation. It didn’t matter that she was a patchwork of matter clinging together through sheer will, what she would not give in this instant, for the next several thousand and million, to keep that warm form of vitality alive to the next rays of morning.

The intensity of her desire overwhelmed her. But then, she needed overwhelming right now. She needed the will to overpower the physical limitations of reality, right now. Something that could drive her to even greater accomplishment then the grief pushing her to press through the long fight of the night before. The fight that she would have to survive and emerge as valiantly from as before. This time Illyria needed to find some impossible strength within her, even more than it had taken to pull herself back to this moment, to ensure not only the others lived. She had to make them all live.

It almost terrified her, how much she cared for these mortals and demons, with their already pitifully short lifespans. At least, in her new limited form, whatever drawbacks there were, time seemed to last longer and drag out on end, each moment a plethora of elongated focus. The vampire Spike told her it is because misery feels longer than the good times, and that she’ll see, once she finds something worthwhile, how the time seems to fly by and eat away unaccounted for before one’s eyes, when they’re pleasant.

He did not use so many words.

Illyria may see some truth in the supposition, as the time since she has held Wesley in her arms, to the battle that seemed an eon, felt heavier to her then a hundred years of war. In her campaigns as a king, she had emerged victorious and vital, and the battles had seemed a flash she had wished to savor, the spoils a whirl of senses that were fleeting behind the next brilliant struggle to catch her fancy. Last night the fighting and struggling had not been like that. It had been expounded and dragging and awful. It had felt so empty.

So pointless.

How bizarre it was, that she cared about these things around her. These insignificant bodies, with their lights so dim, so transient. Illyria desperately wanted to not see them slip from her, not again, or for the first time. Not at all.

Is this what it meant to be mortal?

She asked Wesley, at the completion of the group’s discussion, if she could accompany him on his task. She refused to accept any other answer but yes. He did not, and likely could not, understand why she wished to help him in his task. Maybe he thought she found him weak.

Perhaps he felt sickened, that she had an acute desire in ensuring his success over allowing him to accomplish his task just as independently, as sacrificially, as the others.

It did not matter. She went with him.

She did not hold him in her arms.

But he did survive.

He survived, and in his harsh habit, did not appear grateful. But how could he? He did not know his original fate. He did not hear her lie to him, cradle him and gently assure him of how much he is loved.

Illyria could feel wetness welling up in her eyes. That grief, still present, although the outcome had been changed.

Illyria had him follow her to her own specified target, and made him wait for her somewhere out of the action. He did not wish to remain in the sidelines. She was more grateful than she could have ever expected, that he obeyed her and stayed absent from the fight.

This time, the struggle was much less swift. But she still killed every last one of them.

The approaching battle, full of bodies and bodies, hoards of monsters, pressed on her chest like a weight, so much harder to ignore than even the slip of her essence struggling to hold itself within the vessel, to not break apart the cracks.

Wesley would die. She could see it. Without living through it, she somehow knew. No one in this realm was so lucky, that all of their allies would survive something that awful.

So many of them had already survived once, at the price of the light most valuable. At the price of the one Illyria felt the most alive with.

Even if somehow Illyria made herself impossibly push through this, slaughter again, with this pressing fear replacing her nihilistic urge to kill at the past loss, she would lose one of them.

It was so past infuriating, that she even cared, that it made her feel as cold as the stone Wesley told her she was made of. She was not made of lifeless rock - she was made of a brilliant life that had been burned up to give her form and breath. She was made of a treasure. However belittling Illyria felt this new life was, to be contained in a world of disappointment, a world unbearably small - Illyria still knew this flesh that cradled her and stood the test of holding her together even as she pushed past the limits of endurance on sheer will alone, it was admirable. She was life, she was this form that underwhelmed her, but she was also this spark that Wesley also had, this spark of brilliance that she now saw that people had, that made them worthwhile even when their lives were so short.

For all the agony these feelings gave her, despite how they baffled her and bent her into some shape less extraordinary then she had once been, they were significant. Special. Each uniquely their own, only surging up the same way once and then gone, worth committing to memory if only to not lose them and their spark.

Wesley had regained his sapped strength as he waited for her to finish taking the life of her marks, and upon her completion, he marched off to the alley where they would join the others.

Illyria wished she could freeze time, like she had once been able to, and pause in order to recover. But the world was not that kind.

Whatever strength had allowed her these extra moments, with these fleeting seconds to get to watch the human, it was no longer within her to pull out anything additional. She was just determination, in this frail body pushed beyond its limit. She felt bruises that would take many days to heal, bruises she should never even be able to get. There were aches across her from being thrown the previous instance she had experienced the battle, from this recent skirmish with beings she had encountered no trouble with the first time. But still, the hollow inside her hurt far worse.

She could not stop picturing the face of the corpse. The light gone. The person who, in spite of insignificance, in spite of weakness and pain and collapse, met her eyes as she was born to this world and confronted her.

Illyria had conquered whole universes, slain so many bodies there was no comparison that could measure the effect of her existence, and in those millenia few had possessed the courage to confront her with the strength of such conviction. They had wept in fear, struggled in desperation, shrieked in self destructive glory. They had not looked at her as if she were nothing, for she was a god. They had not looked into her and somehow gleaned fear.

Not that Illyria had fear. But Wesley still had seen her loss, her impossible fall from what she had been to the painful reality of this world. And the man had the gall to respond to her, that now she knew what it felt like.

There was a bravery in that, however misplaced and dangerous to his life. A spark inside Illyria that she would rather not acknowledge was there, pulled strength from that.

This mortal could not hurt her. She did not feel pain at his callous words.

But she did see the significance. Illyria understood that whatever drove him to fearlessness, she needed to acquire. In this new existence, however weak she may become, however intolerable the world could grow, she could not submit to giving into it’s trap. She had to be like this human, she had to find a way to combat this existence and live to spite it. Live until she found something that made suffering through it mean something different. Become something covetable and cherished, like she had found so many spoils of the worlds during her reign.

Even fallen, she could not despair and fail like those warriors and fools and would be champions that dared to fight her only to die. She had to relent, weaker than she ought to ever be, somehow she has to be more endurable then those who had failed to measure up to her, those who had lost.

However much she wished it wasn’t true, in this new state, pathetically weak creatures and forces were more on par with her skills, her body. In this new life her armies were gone, her people were ash, and these new small lives - Wesley, Angel, Gunn, Spike, and Lorne - were her only tethers now. Insufficient though they were, compared to everything she had, everything she was, they were hers.

They could be hers. They could one day mean as much as all of those things before. She could grow to value them. Should they prove themselves, vanquish great foes, she could see them as subjects worthy of a god.

Even without - even if they died tonight, some spark within her valued them still. Had them already, and was not willing to let them go.

Wesley made her feel like she could bear this weakness, grow accustomed to these surges of pain and wonder and so many other bizarre bounties inside of her that were new and horrible and peculiar. Even if she continued to fall, until she were more and more mortal, until her strength sapped to the point of humanity - she could perhaps face her enemies as if she were still god-king. She could somehow hold onto herself, Illyria, and never be lost.

She could not bear to lose these people.

It was an uncomfortable truth, but Illyria had already accepted it, some time when it had slipped past her notice, within that spark inside her that was already resigned to the emotions which swelled and grew until there was no point in fighting them.

She cared.

This was part of being in this world.

The battle she knew was coming, as they waited in that alley, terrified her in a way little else had in eons. She did not give her fear voice, but an itch made her want to urge the others to flee into some building, some escape, so that she would not have to see any of them die in the coming hours.

And yet, they almost certainly would anyway.

This time around, it was Angel.

It was bloody, and chaos, as before. Wesley held himself better in the crowd, with enemies he could draw toward each other, confuse, and messes of activity to use as distraction while he slipped in and out, toward vital points, away from weapons and claws swept toward him. Illyria was desperate to want to protect him, in fact to protect them all, but she had not the energy.

She was swaying, trying to simply survive, her body the most significant and cruelest enemy of all - she could feel the molecules, the skin cells, pulling apart and desperately trying to cling back to each other with the energy she leant them. Strength that should have been spent shattering her fist through skin and bones was instead quivering to hold her firm, keep her solid, alive.

She was still more use than a human, in the fight, but her capacity for violence was a ghost of what it had been in the original instance of this event.

She thought Charles Gunn had died. But in the early hours of morning, as they’d fled - the remaining monsters scattering into the city, becoming an addition to the already significant population of creatures present, but no longer a scourge of imminent death, as they dispersed - she and Wesley had grabbed the man’s arms and torso and hauled him off. He had been breathing, shallowly, and Wesley had looked just as still and weak as his injured partner. The coldness in his face reminded Illyria of herself, when she caught her reflection in glass.

It surprised her, how similar the two of them could be, despite a number of irreconcilable differences. She imagined her face was stoic as well, when they dragged Gunn off toward a place that could, if there was any mercy in some small sliver of this catastrophe, restore him.

In the middle of the night, Wesley and Gunn had been herded off, surrounded by creatures tantalised by the smell and expected taste of their flesh, and Illyria had seen the vampires corralled in the opposite direction. At some point, Angel had seen Gunn take a blow to the head, had seen Wesley dive for the man in a futile attempt to shield his body from vicious clawing, before Wesley’s survival instinct had won out and he had lurched out of the way of a diving paw, the nails slicing across Gunn’s chest and spilling the scent of hot blood into the air.

Angel had seen, and then his other senses had caught up, and he had surged to try to meet up with them. To protect them. In his reckless impulsivity, a monster had thrown him, tossing him across the upper levels of some brick building, other little demons snapping their jaws at him as he slid down, hopeful to make some meal out of the coarse undead body. He had recovered, and fled, still struggling toward the two humans, who were only spared then because Illyria had screamed and drawn the attention of many in the hoard.

Angel had pushed into the heart of the crowd, near Illyria, intent on making efficient use of the concentration of bodies in order to quicken the slaughtering. But some of those enemies had swords, and axes, and other manner of sharp blades.

He did not see the weapon swinging towards his neck, nor the enemy who swung it, both were lost in the swarm of bodies around him, unnoticable as Angel contorted as he brandished his own weapon and lashed out.

It had been so anticlimactic.

This rush of bodies, all yelling and violence, killing each other while moving to try to get a hit on her, on Angel. And finally, one did.

And all that remained was ash.

A swift swing of the blade, which after running through his neck was lost back into the chaos, and a gentle breeze of dust followed, becoming lost as well.

Wesley and Illyria got Gunn to a hospital, where strangers stuck needles into Gunn’s body, and for some reason Wesley told her that it was okay, that it was meant to help, but Illyria could hardly believe him.

For some reason, Wesley had held her while they stood and waited, watching the strangers treat Gunn, his arms clutching onto her sides and his body heavy against her, his motivation more perhaps to use her as something to keep him standing upright, rather than some action in mistaken belief that she needed consoling. She did not need comfort.

He was alive. So was Gunn.

Illyria knew that Spike was out there - with the rising dawn as they’d fled, it was likely the vampire had returned to a safe house. But he was alive. Illyria had not seen him die, had caught his scent in the air, as they’d made their way to the hospital, drifting toward a sewer opening and getting lost in it.

Gunn looked so apparently fragile, laying in that bed with tools fluttering around him in hands Illyria did not know, did not trust. They were supposedly patching Gunn back together, so that he might return to them, the way he was before.

But, Illyria didn’t think they could go back. To the way they were before.

Wesley’s eyes looked at once hollow, and then filled past holding with some unquantifiable thing that made Illyria’s chest ache in empathy. He needed her, to pretend he saw her as a comrade, for them to play the role of friends. So that he could find the strength to not collapse too, and look as weak and broken as his friend on the bed.

He had to hold himself together now, so that when Gunn woke up, someone would help Gunn do the same.

Illyria was responsible for that role, now - for being the tether to strength that willed them to keep existing until this moment passed, until enough time had passed that they could find the strength within themselves again.

She allowed Wesley to pretend.

He was alive, after all.

Illyria could not get the image out of her head, as she regarded Gunn in that bed, so many wires and monitors around him, that awful, insidious noise repeating itself. With every heartbeat, a sound Illyria could already hear in his warm chest as it gently rose and fell, one of the machines mocked it, with a sound so mundane it did not deserve to chronicle the value of life that it documented.

Illyria could not stop seeing the memory of Wesley in her arms, his own particular heartbeat struggling and faint as she felt his pulse just barely while she gripped him, the sound far away and ebbing into the depths of death, to a place she could not follow it, as she watched him fade.

She would have held Wesley back, right now. If he asked.

She could not believe how deeply the threat of mortality shook her.

In Wesley’s body she could feel how it was meant to express itself, in the tellings of human instinct that cannot be controlled by consciousness or will. His muscles felt taut, and there was a heavy exhaustion like he was partly Gunn, partly the same as the body which was quietly fighting to come back.

Breath so quiet, to human ears at least, silent like the loss. She thought to Angel. Somehow, she knew Wesley was thinking of him too.

 

-

 

Eventually, like most things in this world, some new pattern of what might be considered normality was reached.

Gunn became well enough to return home - and home for everyone, right now, was Wesley’s apartment.

Wesley, Illyria thinks, would not have wanted it to be. When he woke up, the nights before they brought Gunn back, Wesley would be sweating and shivering and look like the nightmares that often made home in his head had refused to leave upon waking. His alcohol supply had dried up quickly, and when he might have perhaps in a different time chosen to purchase more, he instead just seemed to look right through Illyria, cold and lost somewhere beyond her, and change his mind about going out.

They all made Wesley’s apartment the new meeting space, because Wesley had the books. And Spike had brought any additional materials they lacked over, relatively soon after the tumultuous events that had transpired. Spike, it seemed, did not wish to be any place else. At least, he did not seem to wish to spend a majority of his indoor time working anywhere else. He said, so many places reminded him of - and then he would refuse to finish his sentence.

Illyria thinks Wesley is reminded of Angel wherever he looks. And so, his apartment is as good, or horrible, a choice as any other place. He looks at his couch and sees a woman who is not there, who will never be there again. He looks at his books and sees a long trail of mistakes, which all lead him to this moment, and no doubt feel to him they will inevitably lead to much worse moments somewhere down the line.

He sees Illyria and can not actually bear seeing her at all.

He still looks through her though, faces her form, that innate defiance from when they first met still present. He will not cower from his monsters. From this monster. From her.

She hopes that if she ever falls completely, becomes soft squishy flesh and sinew like Gunn and Wesley, that she will retain that same level of courage. Of brilliance.

That spark that makes her human special, cherished uniquely among a world of inadequacy for her. She needs to be that brave.

Illyria can barely force herself to look back, so deep is the ache inside when she sees the pain in Wesley confronting her.

She needs to be brave and keep facing it.

Gunn, at least, seems more at ease when he is brought back from the hospital to Wesley’s. Like Spike, Gunn seems pained when he sees or thinks of so many different locations, all of them triggering some memory Gunn must not be ready to face.

When Wesley is almost delirious, at night when everyone is asleep, he goes into the bathroom and locks the door and turns on the fan. He cries.

The light of the bathroom is left off, when he does this. Gunn does not know it happens. But Illyria could not ignore it if she tried. She hears him quietly, whispering to himself - or trying to whisper - through the muffle of the noise of the fan. Illyria cannot compel herself to do anything but get up, silent, and press herself near the wall to listen.

She is concerned. This agony, this behavior, is so much different than his drunken stupors, his shaking night terrors, his shouting fits back when the two of them lived here alone and she endured baffling insults hurled in broken English at random hours of the night once he’d gone to drowning in some poison.

All of that was something, but this was somehow worse. She could hear him say quietly, what a bad person he was. Bad. Bad.

That it was his fault.

A smaller voice, in between gasps, like he was struggling to breath, begging. Pleading to stop, its not real, its not real, it will pass, it’s over now, it will be over soon.

Then more ragged sound, and that mantra of hostility, of fear, Wesley seemed to be drowning in it. “I’m a bad person. How could I let all this happen? I deserve to die. They didn’t - they didn’t - everything is all wrong.”

If Illyria had been more willing to seek solace in self delusion, she might have wondered if he were possessed. His actions, the pain, so remnant of some ghost haunting and hurting its hapless victim. These moments so like some particular occurrence that Illyria had heard described, by some person Angel Investigations had taken on the case of trying to help.

But unfortunately she knew this to be simply Wesley. This was just a part of who he was, now.

She wondered if her telling him it was not his fault, would help in any significant way. She doubted it.

The mind which has lost reason cannot see it even if it surrounds them. Wesley cannot see that this is simply the nature of life, of his world, and that they must simply keep going. That there is no blame on him, no blame on anyone except the creature that decided to end Angel’s life, the forces that decided to unleash the army in the first place. Wesley did not create any of those evils, he can not be at fault.

Except, Illyria knows he views her as one of those forces, one of those things which rightly bares the blame. She killed Winifred Burkle. By being born into this life, she took that person out of it.

She did not decide to do that. But it is the reality.

Illyria has heard him shout and cry and mutter in his exhausted sleep. Wesley did not decide to subject an infant to a life of horror, to an outcome of self destruction and an eventual wish for death. Did not decide to join an organization with resources with the intent to watch the woman he loved fall victim to the ministrations of some no one who worked there, did not realize beforehand they all might have been better off struggling to survive. But what then? In any path of choices, some horror would have awaited them, claimed some of them.

This time, it had been Angel. In a way, because Illyria had made a choice.

She picked the path where Wesley lived.

Now she had to face the consequence of that choice of which she had not known the outcome, but of which she would have picked even knowing it. Illyria has to listen to the whimpers Wesley makes behind the locked door, in the dark of the night when Gunn is asleep on the couch within his own nightmares, when no one is supposed to know Wesley is breaking. Because Illyria has to face that.

She has to come to grips with the fact her choice broke Wesley further. The way he thinks he’s broken so much else. She has to listen to her own thoughts as they falter, as they wonder if Wesley would have wanted this, knowing the alternative.

Would he have chosen to die those nights ago, in some hopeless gamble that it might somehow let him escape all the wrongs that will live on after him. Because then he might be with her. Because then, even if he isn’t, he doesn’t have to remember anymore.

Illyria muses if she could have lived without saving Wesley, if perhaps she had wiped him from her mind, if that would have helped her adjust to the hollow in her that his absence had left gaping.

No. That would have been worse.

Worse to have forgotten, then to have lost to fleeting moments that are now passed by.

Someday she will have to let Wesley go, and there will not be any method to change the outcome. Illyria does not know how she will manage, when that inevitability rushes toward her, when it passes through time like dust in the breeze.

But there is this moment. This moment she would give all the world for, has already given her comrades world for, in a way.

When Wesley opens the door, finished with his breakdown and back to some semblance of composure, Illyria is waiting outside.

There is no point in hiding this from him.

She feels that small flicker of light inside her, ever engulfed by the energy of her much stronger being, wither at the expression on his face. It cries out, mirroring his agony, desperate to hold him close, like that night long ago when she told him how much she loved him, desperate to make him feel that warm and safe.

Illyria wants to be in the lie. She wants herself to feel tethered, secure, lost and stuck in one moment of happiness where everything is alright.

“I don’t wish to lie.”

Wesley is too lost in himself to bother figuring out what she means.

“We should go back to sleep,” he says, after endless moments.

Illyria moves forward, to hold him, and after a moment of hesitance, he collapses and they settle on the floor together. They lean against the wall, the surface cool against their skin. She readjusts, pulls him to her again.

It should be a struggle, but it’s not. They are both tired and gone of caring.

Illyria is so different from him, from all of these people, this world. She doesn’t know how to express what she needs right now.

He leans against her willingly, wraps his arms in kind. Her skin is firm against his, warm and dry while his is tepid and sweaty. Together, they feel almost feverish, and yet the idea of being anywhere else is unfathomable.

Where his hands rest against her is leather, and blue tinge peaking out as it crawls down her skin. It is not human. It is not _her_.

Wesley doesn’t need her right now. He needs this. Just like Illyria needs this.

The truth.

The sensation of two bodies holding each other together, too lost in themselves to be fully aware in the moment. The starkness of that instance dragging on, and in another world what might be awkwardness instead melts away their fears because in their reality together, right now, time has stopped and it is just them.

They don’t belong anywhere, they carry the blame of choices that no life can really measure. Everything important just keeps slipping away.

Illyria suspects it is the curse of this world. The trait that makes it just as much of a hell dimension as any other place. That she should be brought into a new chance, only to destroy the last flickering lights of another’s, that her last life has been utterly annihilated in the agony of this new one, nothing left of what she once was or once had or once might have likened to something she might have loved. That this existence should continue to wane, until she falls ever more, until she is completely lost herself.

Until she loses these new people who have already lost so much, and that new part of her which shines like a supernova stirs the rest of her to passion, to desperate wonder at what she might do just to be the person lost first. Illyria can feel herself, drifting again, to the thought of which is worse.

She doesn’t want to drift right now. She wants to focus on the feel of Wesley’s skin, his grip around her matching the way she clings onto him. Illyria wants to stay in this simple moment, where all she has to know is that this is where she wants to be.

They allow themselves to get lost, to return to themselves and just remain present with each other.

Illyria wills herself to meet Wesley’s eyes, and hopes what he sees is courage.


End file.
